Michael Jordan Collectible Swindler Attempted eBay Scams, Too

Do you have any more tips regarding Juan Garcia? Click here or send a message to darren@actionnetwork.com.

Juan Garcia first said there was nothing in the package he paid $15,000 for.

He then sent a video of him opening the package with nothing in it, he claimed.

Then, when that didn't work, he said he didn't receive the correct cards.

Then he told his bank he should have never been charged for the items to begin with.

Unfortunately, for the scam artist we now know as Juan Garcia, he liked to leave his mark.

For MeiGray — who Garcia gave doctored photos to fake a Michael Jordan jersey photomatch that would have buoyed his collectible 40 fold — he created a fake foundation in the name of a dead photographer.

MeiGray certified the jersey's authenticity — boosting its value from its purchase price of $27,000 to about $1 million — before the Action Network reported on the potential scam. A few days after our report, MeiGray lifted its certification.

For another scam, Garcia gave a business card to someone he was trading with but didn't want to collector to be able to contact him. When the collector later looked at Garcia's business card, it had the collector's own phone number on it instead of Garcia's.

For others, he used similar names to his own — usually Johnathan or John, so that angry buyers couldn't claw their money back.

This time, he gave Hoody's, a large consignment business in Oregon, a shortened version of his name: J Garc.

Max Barnes, general manager at Hoody's, was reading the stories on Garcia — the man who ran Cardporn, a self-proclaimed "hobby watchdog" Instagram site that reached 112,000 followers before being deleted last week amidst the scandal.

Barnes then started to realize his company had been the latest victim. He shared his story with the Action Network.

On July 6, Garcia bought a 2007 Upper Deck Black dual patch autograph featuring Michael Jordan and Julius Erving for $7,700. Four days later, Hoody's sold him a 1997-98 Metal Universe PMG Clyde Drexler in a PSA 4 for $5,655.

Garcia then showed Hoody's a video of him opening their package on tape, which apparently revealed that they forgot to send the cards.

In the video, Garcia shows a box that doesn’t appear to be opened. He cuts through the tamper resistant tape with an X-Acto knife and opens the package to show no cards inside.

"The envelope on top isn't how I put it in there and he opened the package from the bottom," Barnes said.

In the 125,000 auctions that Hoody's manages each year on eBay, Barnes said there are shipping issues with three or four.

eBay authenticates cards worth more than $200, so the shipping lies with them as the middle man. Garcia’s loophole is that eBay doesn’t have the authentication program outside the U.S. and Canada, so he can blame the vendor instead of eBay.

When the "I didn't get the cards" trick didn't work, Garcia tried the "I got the wrong cards" excuse. When that didn't work, he said he had a bank issue and that he never purchased the cards in the first place.

Barnes knew he was dealing with a fraudster, but he only realized he was dealing with Garcia when he matched up the address of Canning Street in Melbourne that others had put on the internet.

Then there was the eBay ID: GlossBoss.

Yet another clue on who he was. Garcia is the CEO of a company called Gloss Media, which ran his now shut down CardPorn site and a still running FoodPorn site.

"The fact that he tried this doesn't surprise me," said Tait Hoodenpyl, owner of Hoody's. "But to try someone as big as us is crazy. He definitely has done things like this many times.”

Expect the hits to keep on coming.